Tales from my handbag

Summer means camping and camping is great fun, provided you like eating burnt things and don’t mind having a constant dribble of urine down your leg from badly executed al fresco weeing. A friend has very kindly given me her two-man pop-up tent. I have a practice pop-up in my back garden but am sadly unable to pop-down, despite stage by stage instructions. This is Crystal Maze but without the skipping baldie in the Bet Lynch overcoat. After rolling around the garden for an hour or so, and a few useless tips from my window cleaner, who’s popped by to have a dump, I give up. Later on, with the help of a man friend, I manage to coax the pesky thing back into its bag. What I fail to notice until I’ve pitched my tent at the campsite, is that despite this being a two man tent, I seem to take up most of its sparse interior. Plus, I have to sleep diagonally otherwise my feet hang outside. The night is long: three wees, one bad dream (I’m Charles Bronson, struggling to tunnel his way to freedom with only the help of an emery board), a screaming baby and a man with loud, extended wind in the next tent.  And then it’s time to get up. Dave, the campsite owner, who tells me he’s spent his night at a very relaxing orgy involving a pond and a bag of grapes, suggests I get a bigger tent. Oh God, have I really got to go to Millets again?

Camping’s great isn’t it? Sitting around a real fire, cooking sausages, snogging the boy in the next tent and falling out of a tree and breaking your leg. Love it. Dirk, me and the kidlets have just been to Ashdown Forest for the weekend. We had everything, a fabulously louche campsite owner, Dave, who positively encouraged us to get pissed and make lots of noise, acres of land where we could wander willy nilly, Pooh Bridge, and, wait for it, Tom Cruise at the local garage. Yes, Tom Cruise. And, according to Dave, my new best friend, he’s only 5′ 3″. Dirk says all famous people are short and newsreaders all have enormous heads. I tend to agree. When I was at the BBC a week or so ago to support the Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus in their bid for stardom in Last Choir Standing, I saw the newsreader, Thomas Schafenacker. He only came up to my middle but his head was the size of a basketball.�